DESTINO Dance is a social enterprise Dance Company using dance as means to empower society and create awareness within different members of our community. DESTINO is a legacy of Adugna Community Dance and Theatre Company and in 2014 Destino Dance was established by two international acclaimed professional dancers and choreographers Addisu Demissie and Junaid Jemal Sendi. The two dancers continued their journeys together pushing boundaries to make tangible changes and contribute their experiences to influence the dance scene in Ethiopia. Destino works closely with young people in the country, aiming at developing the society’s understanding and acceptance towards dance and its important values for social changes.
In 2017 Destino Dance was awarded a grant from European Union Delegation to Ethiopia, were our company had the privilege to visit 7 Ethiopian regions to investigate the country’s traditional dance/movements, stories and inspiration.
DESTINO Dance has released a new book ‘’Movements mean more’’ and a documentary film with three purposes in mind: Preserve the tradition in organized ways, Increase its visibility for people to use it as a guidance for research purposes and Develop Ethiopian modern dance style.
Along with other commitments, one of Destino’s purpose of existence is to create ‘’Ethio-fusion’’ a modern dance technique; developing a new style is the prime reason we held the Adey project. Thanks to the project we learned much that can help the process of developing the tradition. Leaning original steps and the information we gain from each tradition, are the main components to initiate the technique that we wish to introduce as “Ethiopian Modern Dance”. “Ethiopian Modern Dance” is a form of physical movements put together and evolved from traditional dance movements, which has Ethiopian colour, feel, emotions and appearance. It is a dance form that enables us to tell stories with our body and another layer for the art to engage dialog with different audiences and larger members of the society.
We believe once people learnt the foundation of traditional movements and understood the roots of the culture; it is already one step ahead to be able to tell their own stories. With further investigation and additional information given, our body goes through a natural expansion that lend a hand to unlock the movement’s potential or we gain a new knowledge to create new dialogs with its own identity.
Developing “Ethiopian Modern Dance” could be a means of unifying the country to one general direction, where every tribal plays a big role in the process of identifying the technique. The different contribution can be different one to another; some traditional practice and approaches could be used to tell the relationships about nature and anther could be physical connections they have between people and another could contribute values of expressions, when all comes together we identify the modern dance form that represent all of the tribes and become ‘’Ethiopian Modern Dance’’.
For further information on how and where to get the book please call +251 911 62 28 98 or +251 911 145571. You can also drop us a message on Facebook or destinodance@gmail.com
